Based on a combination of cultural exposures I have had recently been watching (Der Ring der Niebelung, The Wire and most explicitly Waiting for Godot) I have been thinking about how people are really afraid of weaknesses. This is true in real life as well as fiction and I just want to point out some of these examples.
Waiting for Godot "Lucky" - So your waiting in the middle of no where and meet two guys. One is bellicose, fat, carries a whip and everything he says is about his power and threatening. The other is attached to a leash, gaunt, near mute and clearly over worked. Which one is frightening? The latter as he kicks, is un responsive and the only time he speaks it is to express a starved bleak view. At least you can joke and bum food of the first guy.
The Wire "DeAngelo Barksdale" "Frank Sobotka" -
Season One's plot starts with DeAngelo getting aquitted and a judge getting angry about it. But DeAngelo is basically an indentured drug dealer to his uncle, Avon, who has had better luck staying off the radar. Avon and associate Stringer Bell eventually also become afraid of DeAngelo, once he's been arrested. Near the end of the season he sums up his situation with "we're born into this shit."
Season two's detail start like a gross parody of S1. Major Valcheck gets jealous that Frank Sobotka donated the glass window to their Church and punishes him by having a detail assembled to look into it. Sobotka is far on the side of the conspircy that the case ends up focusing on, but Valchek's indignation is one of the many thing makes the case a bust. Sobotka also gets a good line while trying to make a deal with the police "[The Stevedors] have been dying a slow death down [at Patapsco] for years, and now you say you'll protect us."
I have yet to see S3-5 so don't spoil it for me
Der Ring der Niebelung "Albrecht" and "Mime" - Albrecht cannot convince any of the Rhinemaidens to sleep with him so he steals their reason d'etre. He uses it to become master of his people and abuse his brother, Mime. All very bad, and it all takes place in the first and shortest of the tetragily. For the rest of the time he is without power, ultimately goading a son conceived off stage. Yet the guy who tried to barter his sister-in-law for construction work and later uses good he knows are stolen for the dept and also works very hard to have his children clean up his mistakes is sort of the hero.
"Mime" is even more clearly only despised as he is weak. After spending part one enslaved by his brother he reamerges in part three as the false parent to Siegfried. He might have killed Siegfried's mother, but he raised the kid to adult hood and taught him stuff. All of it was to get Siegrfired to steal the gold from the giant turned dragon Fafner, so he is evil, but failry transparent. So why does Siegfried continue to say Mime is worse than Fafner, who actually killed his brother to keep the gold?
Those operas are so WTF, I'd hate them if I was not so drawn to them.
So who else do these remind you of? How come so many major villains suffered major setbacks before the story begins? Does that make them more or less interesting than the ones who are super powerful at the begining
Waiting for Godot "Lucky" - So your waiting in the middle of no where and meet two guys. One is bellicose, fat, carries a whip and everything he says is about his power and threatening. The other is attached to a leash, gaunt, near mute and clearly over worked. Which one is frightening? The latter as he kicks, is un responsive and the only time he speaks it is to express a starved bleak view. At least you can joke and bum food of the first guy.
The Wire "DeAngelo Barksdale" "Frank Sobotka" -
Season One's plot starts with DeAngelo getting aquitted and a judge getting angry about it. But DeAngelo is basically an indentured drug dealer to his uncle, Avon, who has had better luck staying off the radar. Avon and associate Stringer Bell eventually also become afraid of DeAngelo, once he's been arrested. Near the end of the season he sums up his situation with "we're born into this shit."
Season two's detail start like a gross parody of S1. Major Valcheck gets jealous that Frank Sobotka donated the glass window to their Church and punishes him by having a detail assembled to look into it. Sobotka is far on the side of the conspircy that the case ends up focusing on, but Valchek's indignation is one of the many thing makes the case a bust. Sobotka also gets a good line while trying to make a deal with the police "[The Stevedors] have been dying a slow death down [at Patapsco] for years, and now you say you'll protect us."
I have yet to see S3-5 so don't spoil it for me
Der Ring der Niebelung "Albrecht" and "Mime" - Albrecht cannot convince any of the Rhinemaidens to sleep with him so he steals their reason d'etre. He uses it to become master of his people and abuse his brother, Mime. All very bad, and it all takes place in the first and shortest of the tetragily. For the rest of the time he is without power, ultimately goading a son conceived off stage. Yet the guy who tried to barter his sister-in-law for construction work and later uses good he knows are stolen for the dept and also works very hard to have his children clean up his mistakes is sort of the hero.
"Mime" is even more clearly only despised as he is weak. After spending part one enslaved by his brother he reamerges in part three as the false parent to Siegfried. He might have killed Siegfried's mother, but he raised the kid to adult hood and taught him stuff. All of it was to get Siegrfired to steal the gold from the giant turned dragon Fafner, so he is evil, but failry transparent. So why does Siegfried continue to say Mime is worse than Fafner, who actually killed his brother to keep the gold?
Those operas are so WTF, I'd hate them if I was not so drawn to them.
So who else do these remind you of? How come so many major villains suffered major setbacks before the story begins? Does that make them more or less interesting than the ones who are super powerful at the begining
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